3 losers from the Bears' unwatchable 6-3 loss to the Seahawks on Thursday Night Football

For so many people, Christmas is a time of happiness. It's a time for being with the ones you love and being grateful for the gifts, both physical and otherwise, that you have in this world. It's easy to forget though, that for many people, Christmas can be a time of sadness, for missing loved ones that are no longer with us and feeling bad about not being able to feel the same happiness that others do.

I'm sure there are fans of the Chicago Bears that fall into each camp. For those that had a cheer-filled Christmas, the Bears obliterated that feeling on Thursday night. And for those that were already depressed, just know that you're not alone, because the Bears gave you a lot of company.

Christmas may be over, but I couldn't help but think about one last Christmas-related thing while watching the Bears' objectively horrendous 6-3 loss to the Seattle Seahawks on Thursday Night Football. That one last thing is the lyrics to You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch, specifically the part that goes, "The three words that best describe you are as follows, and I quote, "Stink, stank, stunk."

Before the game began, I watched a video online of a disgruntled Bears fan performing his version of The 12 Days of Christmas, except instead of eight maids-a-milking, his version featured things like "A heartbreaking Hail Mary" and "Blocked field goal."

I got angry when I watched this video, because it condensed everything that's gone wrong over the past nine weeks for the Bears into one annoyingly upbeat song. First I got angry at the guy that made the song, because I thought, "Why would you harp on all of these negative things?" Then I realized that was foolish and got angry at the Bears instead, because they're the ones that have failed week after week after week. Finally, I got angry at myself, because why do I put myself through this when it always seems to end the same way?

This really was one of the worst and least-interesting games of football ever played. Earlier in the night, Toledo beat Pitt in six overtimes in the GameAbove Sports Bowl (yes, I promise that's a real thing), and that game featured at least 15 moments that were more interesting than anything that happened in the Bears game.

It wouldn't make for a very interesting article to analyze the game and say that everyone involved is a loser for having played in, coached, or watched it, even if that was very much true. Instead, I want to focus on the true culprit for what we all witnessed, and that's the Bears organization. Yes, the players didn't perform, and there will need to be some difficult discussions this offseason about who stays and who goes. But when you're a team that has had one winning season in the last 12, it points to something deeper than simply pointing fingers at the current roster. The players aren't blameless in this, but we're aiming a little higher today. Here are the three biggest losers from a truly deplorable football game.

Bears loser No. 1: Offensive line coach Chris Morgan

Many casual Bears fans might not know the name Chris Morgan, but for those of us that are way too invested in this team, he's near the top of our Public Enemies list.

Morgan has been coaching offensive lines in some capacity in the NFL since 2009, and since then he's bounced around from Oakland to Washington to Seattle to Atlanta to Pittsburgh and then finally to Chicago in 2022.

I'm no expert, but I can't tell what exactly it is that Morgan works on in practice with this team. I get that the Bears offensive line has been turned upside down by injuries, but all of the issues that are going on now are the same ones that we saw earlier in the year.

The O-line is mediocre in the run game, and it's not very good against a four-man rush on passing downs, either. Send any extra defenders on a blitz though, and nobody has the foggiest idea what to do. I watch pretty much every NFL game every week, and I haven't seen any other teams that have no chance of handling a blitz, but when five or more men are coming for Caleb Williams, it's almost comical how inept the line is at protecting him.

Williams was sacked seven more times on Thursday night, bringing his total to 66 for the year. That's the most in the league by far, and the fourth-most in NFL history. They've been playing professional football for a long time, in case you hadn't heard. Oh yeah, and there's still one game to go.

Even if you take away the fact that the line can't do the one thing it's paid to do, the Bears' linemen also commit the worst penalties at the worst times. Caleb Williams had one superlative play in this game, a rolling-left-throwing-across-his-body-missile to Rome Odunze for a touchdown, and it was called back by a holding call. Later in the game, as they were about to go for it on fourth-and-a-foot, the Bears jumped for a false start. Morgan owns all of it.

Bears loser No. 2: Interim head coach Thomas Brown

I have to admit, I was excited when Thomas Brown became the team's interim head coach. Most of it was jubilation that he simply wasn't Matt Eberflus, but I and many Bears fans liked what we saw from the Bears offense once Brown took over at offensive coordinator for Shane Waldron.

Those days are long gone, because Brown has not been up to the task as head coach. His offense has cratered, and he's failing at all of the simple game management things that Eberflus also failed to master.

The Seahawks gave up 57 points in their past two games, but against the Bears impotent offense, they gave up three. On the road. The Bears had 179 yards of total offense. I'm pretty sure the Ravens have done that in multiple quarters this year.

Like so many Bears playcallers before him, Brown has fallen in love with the screen pass. It's comical how often Williams throws the ball at or behind the line of scrimmage. Again the Bears were held scoreless in the first quarter, something that fans have come to expect by this point. Like clockwork, Brown came out with the run-run-pass on the first possession of the game, which of course resulted in a three-and-out. I don't think Caleb Williams attempted a single deep ball until he threw it up for grabs at the end of the game.

Where do I begin on Brown's game management? I guess I'll just skip ahead to the end of the game, where the Bears alternated between using almost the entire play clock with the clock ticking down to calling timeouts in dead ball situations. Brown called two timeouts, and neither one saved him a single second of time that the Bears desperately needed. One of those was after he changed his mind about punting the ball away with just over two minutes left, a move that should have landed him in a downtown Chicago holding cell if he didn't change his mind. Still, wasting a timeout to get out of such an obviously bad decision was arguably worse.

Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit mentioned during the broadcast that Brown would likely get an interview for the permanent head coaching gig when the season was done, but if there's one positive to his tenure as the interim man in charge, it's that Ryan Poles can safely rule at least one person out.

Bears loser No. 3: General manager Ryan Poles

Speaking of Chicago's general manager, I've been a Ryan Poles defender for a long time, but my patience is beginning to wear thin, to the point that even I think we need to get someone new to pick the next head coach.

Poles has built this team backwards. Good teams win in the trenches and build outward, but Poles has prioritized linebackers over pass-rushers and receivers over interior offensive linemen. He's paid guys like TJ Edwards and Tremaine Edmunds as if they're stars, while shopping at the thrift store for guards and centers.

I don't know if Matt Eberflus really was Ryan Poles' hire. I suspect he wasn't. I don't know if Shane Waldron really was Ryan Poles' hire. That one could go either way. But I know that Poles brought in Thomas Brown, and he's been the human embodiment of the Peter Principle since becoming interim head coach.

Nothing that comes out of Poles' mouth lately makes me feel any better. When talking about the O-line in the preseason, he said, "This is the deepest room I've ever been a part of ... I feel more confident in the depth of our offensive line than ever before," but in a pregame interview on ESPN 1000 in Chicago on Thursday, Poles said of the injuries up front, "It's been very challenging to overcome … it's another one of those things I need to reflect on so we can fix it and move forward.”

Poles also spoke about the Bears' penchant for starting slow by saying, "Some of it stems back to training camp." Man, what? It's Week 17! What has been happening at Halas Hall this whole time?!

When the team announced that Matt Eberflus had been fired, team president Kevin Warren big-brothered Poles in the press conference. I think that was the beginning of the end, and the only question now is if the Bears will make the same mistake they did with Eberflus and keep Poles one year too long, or will they do the right thing and finally sync up the GM and head coach.